Advertisers naturally want to reach as many potential customers as possible with their streaming campaigns, but the best strategy to achieve this has been a matter of debate. Should ad buyers limit themselves to working directly with media owners to access the largest audiences? If not, what's the alternative?
With these questions in mind, we conducted a study to measure the incremental reach of Roku Media, which includes a spectrum of media sources, and to compare that reach to what buyers can achieve by going direct. Here's what we learned.
We launched Roku Media in 2018 to help buyers and sellers leverage our first-party data, analytics, and ad technology to meet their goals and target audiences more effectively on the Roku platform.
Roku Media aggregates fully viewable, high-quality video ad inventory from both The Roku Channel, a Top 5 channel on the Roku platform, and our trusted network of more than 100 top TV streaming providers.
Crucially, Roku Media offers exclusive, incremental reach across all channel segments we measured. That includes ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) and free, ad-supported television (FAST) that offer no-cost or low-cost access to premium shows and movies, as well as TV Everywhere (TVE) inventory where pay TV subscribers authenticate and access broadcast and cable programming on their digital devices.
We found that Roku Media has an exclusive reach of 29% compared to campaigns placed on AVOD channels, including Hulu, ESPN, and Discovery+.¹ This means that advertisers buying from these AVOD channels would have missed nearly one-third of the accounts they could have reached on the Roku platform.
Roku Media’s comparables to FAST and TVE are even more pronounced. Roku Media has 80% exclusive reach compared to FAST channels and 94% exclusive reach relative to TVE channels.² Duplication is often rampant when these channels are bought in silos because they are typically part of traditional TV buys.³
We also found that Roku Media can add incremental reach to a brand’s current TV streaming plan. For instance, one of Roku’s major Big Tech advertisers found that nearly half of Roku viewers (46%) who watched ad-supported channels didn’t watch channels on its existing TV streaming buy.⁴
That speaks volumes about Roku’s ability to provide access to audiences that can’t be found elsewhere.
Roku has grown quickly in recent years and now reaches 73.5 million global active accounts, giving advertisers the ability to access new streamers who aren’t reachable on other top channels. According to an additional Roku Media viewership analysis, placing buys through Roku Media could provide media buyers with 70% greater incremental reach among audiences who are not accessible through three of the top ad-supported channels.⁵
Importantly, advertisers can use Roku’s ad platform, OneView, to buy Roku Media as well as to activate additional individual media buys with publishers. By managing a range of deal types and supply sources centrally on OneView, buyers can manage reach and frequency across their TV streaming campaigns.
As a result of this exclusive audience and Roku’s extensive premium supply partnerships, a significant portion of the vast streaming audience can’t be reached by advertisers who restrict their streaming ad buying to direct deals with media sellers.
That’s why it’s critical to supplement direct buys with audience aggregation to give advertisers the scale they need.
The bottom line: If you’re buying the pieces and not the platform, you’re missing out.
Contact us to learn more about Roku Audience Network.
¹¯³ In November, 2022
⁴¯⁵ Roku Internal Data, 2022